Digital radios use digital technology for transmission and reception of signals over the radio spectrum. Digital radios can be used in all frequency bands (AM and VHF). There are different Digital Radio broadcast standards namely Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM), Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB), HD radio etc. Digital Radios are high quality digital replacement for analogue radio broadcasts in AM and VHF bands. In Digital Radio, multiple services are transmitted through single frequency.
The significant features of digital radios bring forth the high-quality digital replacement for analogue radio broadcasts in AM and VHF bands. Digital radios possess eminent features such as: providing good audio quality, supporting both audio and data, providing more number of services in a single frequency and supporting emergency warning system etc.,
One of the major discouraging factors of digital radios over analogue radios is the service switching time. The time taken for service switching in digital radios is higher than that of analogue radios. There are many prior art that deals with systems and methods for reducing the service switching time between frequencies. For example,
U.S. Pat. No. 7,950,042 to Nabil Yousef entitled “Fast switching between time division multiplexed (TDM) channels” relates to a system and method for reducing a channel switching delay in a TDM mobile television systems. The transmitter sends a sequence of data bursts associated with channels to the receiver. The receiver buffers on the data bursts of channels stored in the internal memory and plays the channel when the user requests for a change.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,161,507 to Jae-Jin Shin et. al., entitled “Channel switching in a digital broadcasting system” relates to a channel switching apparatus and method in a digital broadcasting apparatus for reducing time. The transmitter sends channels to the receiver end through a physical channel. The receiver stores the received content of channel and plays the channel requested by the user.
Systems and methods in the existing art disclose the reduction in the channel switching time in digital radio broadcast system. The switching time is reduced by storing the all other channel information along with the requested channel information in the receiver device.
However, when information including data of other channels along with the requested channel is stored in a receiver device, receiver device requires more memory to store such data. Also, the broadcasting channel requires more bandwidth to accommodate such data as part of the transmission.